Lapponica no.8
Use
The Lapponica no. 8, is one of eight sister ships, build by the Areal Steam Carriage company for the Eglen's first post distributing company. Designed to carry mail over great distances at high speed.
With the expansion of the Glorious Kingdom of Eglen the distances became to big for the Maynard-Stanway Mail Distributing System. The Maynard-Stanway system was good for smaller distances, it was fast and direct, and no other system could compete with it. But if you wanted to send messages spanning the Kingdom. Then it was easier to gather those in one place and then ship them by air ship to another hub.
Eglen's first operates five such post distributing hub's and the eight Lapponica air ships shuttle back and forth between them every day. Making it so that a message can cross the kingdom in the span of two days.
The Lapponica's cannot take passengers. They are equipped with just spare accomodation for the crew.
Power Generation
Boilers
The Lapponica is equipped with ten double ended triple furnace small pipe boilers. As is tradition the boilers are spread out over three boiler rooms, forward, midships and aft. The forward and aft boiler room have three boilers each, each group of three connected to a single funnel. The midships boiler room has four boilers, connected to a double (side by side) funnel. The boilers burn coal, which is stored in coal bunkers forward and aft of each of the boiler rooms. The boilers produce super-heated steam at a pressure of 50 at at a combined maximum rate of 175 pounds of steam per minute.
Funnels
The smoke stacks pass from the boiler room, straight up trough the balloon, and extend above the balloon for two meters. As an experimental way to increase the heat transfer to the lifting gasses the stacks have cooling ribs attached to them inside the balloon.
Condensers
The Lapponica is build with four vacuum condensers, placed to the sides of the hull, in between the three sets of wings. The condensers cool used steam back down to liquid water. By allowing outside air to ventilate trough them. On the Lapponica the air inlet at the bottom is angled forward so that due to the motion of the air ship, air is pushed trough the condensors.
Propulsion
Lift
Lift, to get the air ship off the ground and into the air, is generated by the rigid balloon connected with cables above the hull. The balloon is filled with a lighter than air gas. Also this gas is heated, by the radiant heat of the funnels, and by steam coils placed in the balloon. Valves on deck control the amount of steam allowed into the heating coils, by which the crew regulates the temperature in the balloon, and thereby the heat.
Forward motion
The Lapponica's wings are a step away from the previous design of having one wing on each side being the length of the hull. The Lapponica has three sets of narrow wings. Which can be controlled independently. Both the [tooltip:Distance up and down]stroke, speed, and angle of the wing is adjustable by the crew.
For slower cruising the Lapponica can fold the forward and aft pair of wings, to reduce drag. Then the air ship will only fly in the center pair of wings, which do not have the ability to be folded.
Engines
To power the massive wings, each wing is equipped with it's own engine. The Engine building Guild, has provided the Areal Steam Carriage company with their latest design, that has more power in a smaller package.
They are wide angle V8 blocks, with double acting pistons. The cylinders have different size to be able to use the triple-expansion system. Each bank has one high pressure cylinder, one medium pressure cylinder, and two low pressure cylinders. The cylinders drive a single crankshaft connected to a gearbox which moves the wing.
To synchronise the movement of the wings, the gearboxes of the different wings can be coupled together via long shafts that run the length of the ship.
If the ship is running at full speed, the waste steam is used to heat the balloon before it's condensed back to water. On reduced speeds it is not hot enough to heat the balloon and is directly guided to the condensers.
Steering
On the aft of the balloon, pointing down from the end of the balloon hangs an air rudder, which is operated by linkage and steam powered pistons. To turn the ship port and starboard.
Control
The ship is operated and controled by a steering position at the bow of the hull. From where linkages, cables, speech tubes, signal wires and steam lines lead to different components of the ship to adjust settings or give commands.
Weapons & Armament
As the Lapponica is a civilian ship she is officially unarmed. Rumours has it that she has a steam powered harpoon on deck just forward of midships.
Hangars & docked vessels
There are two holds, forward and aft of the middle boiler room. The holds are accessed by doors in the side of the hull. Just under the condensers. The doors are quite small compared to other cargo carrying air ships. But the Lapponica is designed to carry mail, at high speed over great distances. Not haul large and heavy amounts of cargo.
Hull: 15 paces
Beam at wing tips: 120 paces
Hull: 210 paces
Oh MY! I WANT a picture of this AWESOME sounding aircraft!